A perfect day out for Mitchelton-Scott at Emakumeen Bira
23 May 2018 02:14
The Mitchelton-Scott team had an extremely successful Emakumeen Bira, winning two stages and putting three riders into the top four overall. Their greatest performance came on Tuesday's final stage 4 when Amanda Spratt went on a 54-kilometre solo break to win both the stage and the general classification. She took the leader's jersey off her teammate Annemiek van Vleuten, who finished second overall. "It's a victory for the whole team; we couldn't have hoped for a better day. We came here with some good GC options with Annemiek and Georgia [Williams]. And we were in an ideal position coming into the last stage with three riders in the top 10. I think I was the one that people were probably not looking at as much, and I could use that to my advantage," Spratt said. Spratt added that there was a split in the peloton in the run-up to the Urkiola climb that put their main competitors, Anna van der Breggen (Boels Dolmans) and Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (Cervélo Bigla), on the back foot.ADVERTISEMENT "We really used our numbers, isolating Ashleigh and Anna in particular. There was a split in the peloton, and we had four of us in there. Anna, Ashleigh, and Annemiek were all in the second bunch. We got Alexandra Manly and Jenelle Crooks to really drive that group with Georgia and I. And as soon as we hit the bottom, I just attacked straight away." Cycling is often about how you react to an unexpected situation. Spratt explained that this was not the tactic the team had laid down beforehand.
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